Drinking Contest [ReD]

"It was a one-eyed mechanical tiger, Loch. It attacked me and pinned me down on the ground. I almost got killed, actually..."Fuck the dress."

"I'm glad you didn't get killed," Lochlann said, squeezing her in a semi-hug again. Then, he laughed, and said, "If you're not careful you'll get fucked in the dress."

He realized that it didn't quite come out how he wanted to.

"I meant fucked up, like we'd be..drinking..when you're..GAHHH nevermind." he burred his face in her hair so she couldn't see how scarlet he was.

Very smooth Lochlann.


"Stacy's mom,"

Lochlann grabbed a beer, angled the bottle down his throat, and then finished it in one chug.

"Righto lovely lady. Your turn."

"How unfair, Lochlann, tell me the stories behind the choices first, " she said. "The shark... and the apartment... They're both pretty unbelievable themselves."

"Oh! uhhh, okay," Lochlann said, blinking. "Well, by now, I think you've pieced together that I spent a lot of time near the ocean. i ummm...."

How to phrase this.

"I go diving a lot, and once I was in the water, and I was having trouble surfacing because there'd been a storm, and the waves were really choppy," Lochlann said, frowning as he tried to recall the memories from that night. "And..this shark just would not leave me alone. He wasn't a very big one, but he kept, you know, bumping me"

Lochlann bumped her with his nose to demonstrate.

"And finally I just punched it, hoping he'd go away."

The shark hadn't, so Lochlann ended up eating it.

"He wasn't doing anything wrong, just being a shark, but I didn't exactly want a shark that close to my legs."

He forgot about what the other thing was, so he wrinkled his face. "Oh yeah. So the girl who shot me? She has something of mine. I've been trying to get it back for months now. I broke in there once to look for it, but she caught me, so I had to jump out the window. The other time was to leave a note, and the last time I took something of hers, so now we're even."

He realized what a delinquent he sounded like so he said, "my life would be a lot cooler if I was a spy or something."

"I dunno much about spies, but I don't think their lives are cool. Then again I'm not really sure,"

"I don't, either, but I don't know...at least they're accomplishing something I guess," Lochlann said. He also took a huge gulp of whiskey, shaking his bottle. Halfway down.

"Right, so for my turn, let's see... I have a picture of my adoptive parents in my wallet. I have a katana. I don't get along well with other girls."


"You don't have a katana," Lochlann said automatically. "I met your friends and not one of them was a girl, and I've never looked in your wallet but you seem like the sort of person who would keep the things most valuable to her where they are easily portable."

He could easily be wrong and Lochlann grabbed a beer, waiting to hear the verdict.

Lochlann watched her pull the Katana back, and then he grabbed the beer and chugged it.

"Fuck," he said, putting the bottle down.

He'd never heard of Mr. Watanabe, but he made really bright, really shiny weapons. Though Lochlann wanted to ask about a million quetsions about her powers, he stuffed them all down. Don't make it weird, he told himself. It was probably a little too late for that.


"I don't have their picture. I lost the only one I had a few years ago... One of the most heart-breaking moments of my life..."

"Oh," he said, and then he pulled her closer again. He rested his head back on the top of her chin. He was starting to feel...maybe a little bit buzzed. It usually took him another bottle or so--this was good stuff.

. "Welp, your turn again."

"I'm afraid of doctor's offices. I stopped eating mutton since we got lamby. I took something from you and you didn't even notice."

"There's no way you can take something from me without me noticing," she said. "That one's the lie."

"You're right," Lochlann said, looking down at her. Something in his eyes changed and his face softened. "But let's make it the truth."

He leaned down until his lips were just about to touch hers, his breath grazing her skin in a feather-light touch and then--

—-he didn't do it.

He got up and went to grab another beer, chugging it quickly, and then went over to the kitchen. He splashed some water on his face and looked through the pile of paperwork on the kitchen table, and then sorted through his desk, looking for something.

He came back and returned to his spot right behind Addy and dropped a small collection of papers on her lap.

"That was the lie, but I did sort of steal your likeness."

It was his scrawled handwriting and the first page said Addy's Angelfish.